Kevin Nyango
Konga is one of the biggest e-commerce companies in Nigeria. The company was started in 2012. Since its launch, the company has been in fights over the commanding of the e-Commerce market in Nigeria with Jumia, a startup company which was also started in 2012. Jumia is in possession of a European startup incubator Rocket Internet. The two companies have both struggled, irrespective of the good funding in establishing an online shopping as a useful business at scale in Nigeria, given some logistics and supply chain difficulties in Africa’s largest economy.
Konga sacked 60% of its staff on 30th November 2017 as it was announced by CEO Shola Adekoya to the staff. This is not the first time Konga is laying down a number of its staff; in 2016 the company sacked 10% of its staffs. The CEO said that the company had taken that step to adopt a leaner business model. Speculations are there that Sim Shagaya, the company’s founder and former CEO was on the verge of taking back his role. Shagaya resigned in 2016 only two weeks after 10% of the staff were laid down.
Despite the fact that both Jumia and Konga introduced Black Friday sales to the Nigerian market and had made it one of the biggest platforms, Black Friday customers opted to go offline to Shoprite and Spar for better deals.
Konga managed to get more than $75 million from investors including Kinnevik, a Swedish investment firm, and Naspers, Africa’s most valuable company but that has not prevented it from the Nigerians economic battles. Nigeria just came back from its first recession in 20years, and it underwent a negative year of growth in 2016. Although the countries improved ranking according to World Bank, many local businesses still believe that the market is still unfriendly.
